I am a very lucky man – I’ve got an amazing wife and am the father to three wonderful kids. Lylli was born on Halloween in 2008, Gracie was born November 2010 and although she only lived for 17 months, she will remain as much a part of this family as the rest of us, and Mickey Gray, our first son, was born in June of 2012. I’m not going to say that life has gone exactly as I would have wanted, but it is a good life and I am determined to make the best of it.

This blog is an attempt to document my quest to become a dad that my family can be proud of.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

This past weekend my wife finally decided to copy the video on her flip camera onto her laptop for a back up - or more likely so she can have room to start over since it was pretty much full. Regardless of her reasoning, I was sitting across the room as she and my daughter were watching some of footage on the tiny little screen. It was so cute how she kept wanting her to rewind to see Daddy -- "I See Daddy" she'd say over and over again until Carrie would rewind to show her. As I sat and watched a strange thought occurred to me -- I imagined myself not being there and Lylli asking Carrie to see her daddy over and over, not because it was a neat game and that she's recently started a small daddy phase, but what if I died and that was the only way she got to see me. It made me really think about how I need to do something to get myself healthy. I think about our high maintenance pack of dogs - the 8 year old mastiff, Milo, that recently tried to kill the 5 year old bait dog Henry, the queen bee (actually in Zoe's case, the B should be capitalized if you know what I mean), and last of the dogs but not least, Bodey, the dog with Cerebellar Hypoplasia that has gotten much worse in his mobility in the last year or two and pretty much only moves when we carry him. The Dogs aside, there's our pride and joy - the hurricane that we call Lylli who is as active as they come, And that doesn't even include Gracie on the way with, no doubt, many challenges ahead. My girls need me and will need me for a long time -- that said, I am going to do what I need to do to get myself back to a healthy place.